Kitchen Floor on the Cheap

As many of you have probably noticed, I have hideous sea green shag carpet through a good portion of my house. I hate it. It’s hard to clean and it’s just a strange color and it’s running threadbare because it was installed when shag was cool. It especially irks me in the kitchen. Yes, there is shag carpet on my kitchen floor. It IS a terrible idea (and I can read your mind). Being the master of something I call the ‘triple-fail’ this is less than ideal for me. Here’s how it looked:

Now, I know you’re thinking just pull it out and put in some linoleum or hardwood or vinyl. I’d love to do just that, but our slab has a crack that runs directly through the kitchen. So, I could save up, give up my kitchen for a few weeks and grind down the concrete, fill the crack and level the thing before we could install new flooring or I could cheap out since we’re planning on building a new house anyhow.

I chose to cheap out. I saw this rug at the Dollar Store for $22 and snagged it because it matches my KitchenAid mixer. We slipped it under some appliances (also in need of replacement!) and I’m very happy with the result/price.

The best part is: it comes out so we can shake it out and wash it outside. It’s already saved me a huge headache when I spilled a bucket of curdled milk a few days after installing it. We just pulled it outside and hosed it off a few times and let it air out. If I’d still had the shag there, it’d have been a terrible mess and we’d never get it out, so we’d have to just pull it out and deal with bare concrete for awhile. Silver Linings.